glitches

Victory Song

I have a song on my IPod that makes me tear up almost every time I hear it.  Whenever I’m feeling like I need a reality check or I need a pick-up I play it because it reminds me of what I’m doing, why I’m here, and what I can hope for some day.

In 2008 I was pretty emotionally invested in the Obama campaign.  I even volunteered for the campaign on voting day and ended up standing on a street corner with a big sign urging people to vote for him.  I went door to door canvassing to try to help people get to the polls.  I wanted Obama to win because he had a platform which I supported, but more importantly I wanted him to win because he was a bi-racial man.  I know that might sound small or naïve, but that’s where I am.  Before Richardson dropped out I wanted him to win because he is from New Mexico and he’s Latino.  That’s just how I roll.

The day after the election, Oprah had Will.i.am on her show, where he debuted his new song about the election.  The song is so raw, yet it captures the day so well.  The day after Obama was voted president.

I went to sleep last night, tired from the fight.  I’ve been fighting for tomorrow all my life.  Yeah, I woke up this morning, feeling brand new, ‘cause the dreams that I’ve been dreaming have finally come true.  It’s a new day.

I can identify with this.  I understand fighting for tomorrow, going to bed weary and waking up weary but ready to fight again.  I spend a lot of time in my career scheming my plan to continue the fight.  I fantasize about the day when I can wake up to a dream realized.

It’s been a long time coming.  Up the mountain kept running.  Songs of freedom kept humming.  Channeling Harriet Tubman, Kennedy, Lincoln, and King.  We gotta invest that dream.  It feels like we’re swimming upstream.  It feels like we’re stuck in between a rock and a hard place, we’ve been through the heartaches and lived through the darkest days….

There is such dark history in this country.  America’s past is filled with horrifying memories of darkness interspersed with brilliant flames of inspiration, goodness, and visions of a just humanity.  Whenever I hear this part of the song I’m filled with yearning for that inspiration, and I’m filled with deep and unsettling jealousy for Black Americans, because they have this history rich with powerful and influential leaders, and this history rich with resistance and small victories.

If you and I made it this far, well then, Hey! We can make it all the way.  And they said “No we can’t” and we said “Yes we can.”  Remember, it’s you and me, together.  It’s a new day.

We’ve come so far together.  In the early years of the United States, Black slaves sought refuge with American Indian tribes in the southeast and northeast.   The civil rights movement was important for all Americans, not just Black Americans.  Latinos mobilized during this time and formed important labor groups which helped change the way migrant workers were treated.  American Indians mobilized and tried to reclaim land lost to broken treaties.  In more recent history Japanese Americans were finally recognized for their struggles during the second world war, some Native peoples received justice in the form of recognition that our lives were destroyed through U.S. policies.  Sometimes the deepest and most profound gesture is that of offering an apology, and we get that occasionally, through dribs and drabs of federal policy.  But it's never enough.

It’s been a long time waiting.  Waiting for this moment.  Been a long time praying.  Praying for this moment.  We hope for this moment, and now that we own it, for life I will hold it, and I’ll never let it go.

Oh, how I want this.  I want the federal government to stand up and say “We deliberately and with much forethought did every thing we possibly could to eliminate Native peoples from this country.  And we’re deeply, terribly sorry.  We fucked up in a big way.  We created such a huge mess, it’s going to take an enormous amount of work to try to even start to fix this, and we’re dedicated to fixing the problems we created. “  I want the federal government to say, “Although we can’t bring back your grandparents and great grandparents, we want to fix things now so that your problems will not continue.  We accept our role in creating the devastating health problems, the overwhelming poverty, and the choking suicide in your adolescents, the diabetes, and unacceptable death rates in your communities.   That’s our fault, and we’re now going to do what we can to fix it.  We’re going to funnel money and resources into this problem we created so that it will never happen again.”

It’s for fathers, our brothers, our friend who fought for freedom.  Our sisters, our mothers, who did for us to be in this moment.  Stop and cherish this moment.  Stop and cherish this time.  It’s time for unity, for us and we, that’s you and me, together.

I cherish the fact that we as Americans have done something we thought impossible.  We brought together hope and history and made something good.  I do cherish this.

‘Cause we weren’t fighting for nothing.  And the soldiers weren’t fighting for nothing.  No, Martin wasn’t dreaming for nothing.  And Lincoln didn’t change it for nothing.  And children weren’t crying for nothing.

It’s a new day. 

The thing is, when I hear this song I feel like our people are fighting for nothing.  We’re fighting and dreaming and crying and things aren’t getting any better.  

I spend my days reading and writing about this incredible disparity in survival between American Indians and non-Hispanic whites.  In New Mexico more than half (55%) of Natives die from cancer, where less than a third of non-Hispanic whites will die from the disease.  Same cancers, but the differences (among others) are that Natives don’t get the health care they need to get the early diagnoses and the prompt treatment, and that Natives still see cancer as inevitably fatal, where non-Hispanic whites see it as possibly fatal but still worth going to the doctor about.  We have serious issues, and I’m fighting an uphill battle.  There are lots of us footsoldiers in this war against healthcare disparities, but for all our efforts it sure doesn’t feel like we’re getting anywhere.

I can’t wait for our new day to come.  I can’t wait to feel like our grandfathers and grandmothers endured their struggle so we could see a new day.  I can’t wait to feel anything but overwhelming despair over the problems in our people today.  We’re strong and we’ve made it this far, but will we ever be able to talk about our history as a terrible past and not part of our present?  I can’t wait until we can sing of our resistance in the form of our own victory song.

Oh, my friends.  I'm so discouraged today.  I feel like everything is taking forever, nothing is going right, and I'm not sure what my goal is in the first place.  It's hard to keep one's eye on the prize when there isn't a clear prize in mind.  And the price of the prize is so high- right now my family is out playing in the new snow, while I'm at home pounding away at the keyboard trying to find something suitable for presentation.  Trying to make old software do new tricks, trying to feel like I've actually made some progress on something even though I just haven't done nearly what I thought I could do this month. 

I miss you, my friends.  I miss reading your blogs, miss your comments, miss writing to you and having the satisfaction of completion, the satisfaction of having written something that was actually coherent and heart-felt. 

I thought if I wrote about it here, I would get fired up enough to do the next step, but I'm just not.  I'm just, .... broke.  Not quite broken, but definitely broke.

Still here

You may have been wondering where I've been these days.  Or maybe you know me well enough not to wonder?  I'm trying to graduate in May, which means I have to hustle for the next few months to finish this dissertation and get it off to my committee.  I haven't had a huge amount of luck with getting participants for the study, but I'm getting closer and I hope to have enough by the time I graduate to make it a publishable study. 

Mondays are really hard for me.  Every monday that comes along I struggle to get going, struggle to get excited about another week where I feel like I can't get enough work done, can't find continuity to think about my research, can't spend enough time on work and family and still maintain my sanity.  I've been going to bed at 8:00, partly because I am reading fiction at bedtime so I can sleep without obsessing over my research, and partly because I'm getting up at 5:30 every morning with the baby.  So Mondays come along and I have to set myself up for success by re-establishing my work patterns and getting my butt in gear.

I just wanted you to know that I'm thinking of you, and I will try to post more, but I can't make any promises.  If you know me IRL, find me on facebook and we can keep up with each other there. 

smooches.

bagpipes

This is one of those days where I am happy to see the end arrive, yet I waited forever for it to come.  Sweets had his graduation today, and all that work and waiting and patience has paid off.  Finally.  There were times when I was choked up with emotion, times when I felt humbled and excited to be surrounded by so many smart, devoted, passionate people.  And there were times when I was exhausted and overwhelmed and a little frantic.

It didn't help that the lentil woke up at 5:30 this morning, and that I had been up already for an hour thinking about how much I wanted to be asleep.  It didn't help to think that my cat is probably dead and that sweets leaves early tomorrow for a two week trip and he will miss both our birthdays.  It definitely wasn't useful to think that I get to spend most of tomorrow entertaining his relatives and my former step mother and my little sister when I really need to FINALLY start working on my own freaking work.

But seeing my handsome husband wearing his step-dad's cap and gown and walk in that procession with all those other people was amazing.  I looked up and that was my husband, and he was smiling and happy and in the moment, basking in the glory.  He was there, celebrating a moment we've been awaiting for so long.  And there were bagpipes.  Bagpipes always make me a little misty.

But now I'm exhausted and I have a difficult two weeks ahead of me.  If you don't hear much from me, please forgive me.  I'm just struggling under the weight of responsibility.  I'll be here, and I'll be back in full force in just a few short weeks.

academic meetings

I had a few meetings with advisors today, and I'm feeling a little raw.  The meetings went as well as they could, but I was urged to get off my ass and do some work for once, and nobody ever likes hearing that.

The good news is that I am doing work.  the bad news is that I need to do more.  lots more.

A few months ago I emailed a copy of a manuscript off to a professor to get her comments so I could submit it to a journal.  We finally met today and she was kind but clear- it's not ready.  In fact, it's nowhere near ready.  Her words: "It seemed like a very good student paper."

Ouch.  I mean, yes- it did start out as a student paper, but it's been revised several times since and it needs to get sent off already.  Nobody likes being told they are amateur.  Even when they are.  the problem is that the paper is about a process, and it's about my process in particular.  All that personal writing I do here was employed in that paper, and since it was about MY process, I wrote it in first person.  I don't think academic writing as a whole is much improved by the use of third person narrative, in fact it lends to a false sense of objectivity that isn't truly possible in writing.  So I wrote my story using my own voice, which given the circumstances makes the entire piece more readable.  I don't see anything wrong with that.  But I've already had two comments that suggest that the paper is not publishable as a first person piece, because some reviewers may be offended by the assertion that my personality and process is interesting and worth learning from.  I still stand by the belief that science is subjective, and we should stop using these screens to try to obscure this fact.

I'm just ahead of my time.  I was also told that a new and novice researcher can't get away with writing in the first person- this is a tool only allowed senior authorities.  And there is little that will irritate me more than being told I'm not allowed to write a certain way because I'm not part of the old school.  (This is the same old school that won't write in first person in the first place, so I don't see why it should even be an issue!)

The other meeting was the one where my advisor told me to get my freaking thesis published already and be done with it.  C'mon, already!  It's been three years, for fuck's sake.  Well, she didn't say it quite like that, but you get the jist of it.  That's when I broke it to her that I can't submit the damn manuscript until I get approval from the tribes I sampled from.  Oops- she didn't like that a whole lot.  doh!

It's going to be a long summer.

and jasmine is still missing.